he Amsterdam based New Cool Collective has released an impressive amount of albums within the last 28 years. With an astonishingly diverse list of collaborations ranging from Matt Bianco and Tony Allen to Orchestra Baobab’s saxman Thierno Koité. Awards for film scores, hit records, popularity polls, and even a style award for Benjamin Herman’s impeccable wardrobe. New Cool Collective has become an extremely tight unit, totally at ease performing on live television shows, stage plays, giant stages, tiny clubs, jazz festivals, pop festivals, world music festivals and anything else you can think of. Playing a familiar mix of Jazz, Latin, Afrobeat and Boogaloo. In more recent years the band has extended its impressive catalog with strong releases such as Electric Monkey Sessions 1 & 2 and the quirky electronic sounds of Dansé Dansé. In the spring of 2021 the band left its hometown of Amsterdam to record in Rotterdam. Allowing the band the soak in new energy and influences ultimately resulting in a new record: YUNIKōN. The characteristic drum machines and synths featured on predecessor Dansé Dansé haven’t disappeared, instead, the band has combined them with organic field recordings and engineer Simon Akkermans’ ‘Wall of Sound’. Allowing most tracks to evolve until reaching their final form during the last moments of the mixing process. Title track Yunikōn symbolises the album for the band members: “elusive and kaleidoscopic” just like the mythological creature from which the album title borrows its name.